It is said that smell is the sense most closely associated with one’s memory. It should be no surprise to me then, that whenever I read a newspaper, I am almost instantly brought back to my childhood, sitting in the kitchen, watching my dad read the newspaper. Along with the dusty smell of the paper, I can recall the smell of coffee brewing. It is a childhood memory I hold as close as Christmas morning. Unfortunately, the scene is one that is now more rarely conjured up because newspapers have, especially on Georgetown’s campus, been largely replaced by their online counterparts.
As a child, I always looked on with awe as my dad sat at our kitchen table reading the paper intently, keeping the fold perfect as he turned the page, and looking more interested in what he was reading than most children my age were in Pokémon. While I could not take the time in the morning to brush my hair or match my socks, my dad was able to sit for an hour every day, reading what seemed to me at the time was the most uninteresting thing in the world.
And yet, I wanted nothing more than to do exactly what he was doing. Though, as a 9-year-old, I certainly didn’t want to read the paper, I wanted, so desperately, to want to read the paper. To me, the newspaper was the ultimate symbol of maturity, and reading it was all it took to be a grown-up. I wanted to read the newspaper like my dad did more than I wanted to drive, wear a suit, or any of the other things I associated with adulthood.
It now appears, however, that my pursuit of maturity and adulthood may be in vain, and not only because I still do not brush my hair or wear matching socks. By the time I am my father’s age, print newspapers will likely no longer be around, and the art of the perfect quarter newspaper fold will have gone the way of roof thatching.
Newspaper circulation has been declining steadily for years now, papers are starting to charge for online content, and Rupert Murdoch just introduced The Daily, the first online-only daily news publication, released exclusively for the iPad. The future of physical newspapers is looking increasingly dire.
I have never been an opponent of progress or technology, and in fact I think the proliferation of online news and semi-news (like Twitter and Digg) have profoundly benefitted society, and have made ignorance a hard quality to come by. I have always appreciated how online news could revolutionize how I thought about the world, but I much less expected it to change my perceptions about adulthood.
I can’t help feeling, however, a sense of disappointment that a rite of passage I had held with such esteem, and had waited patiently for, will soon be outdated. Though I will have the opportunity to read the newspaper at the kitchen table every morning, I think I will be the last generation to do so.
I admit that although I prefer reading the actual paper when I’m home, it’s more convenient and more accessible to read it online while I’m at school. I have and will continue to adapt to the changing media, with only very slight qualms about it. What is most disappointing to me, however, is that I won’t be able to instill the excitement and wonder about adulthood to my son, in the same way my father did to me.
I’m big on tradition and small on creativity. I know I have plenty of time, but I’m now faced with the challenge of coming up with my own way of inspiring wonder in my children that’s as meaningful as was my dad’s.
In the meantime, I hope to achieve all the other benchmarks of maturity and adulthood, and hopefully, along the way I might accrue an interest that will make maturity attractive to my future children. Otherwise, my son might one day be writing a similar article lamenting the anachronism of mismatched socks.
